sheets of sunlight, slipped one by one through the dusty window-panes. I followed you up four flights of stairs, and with each step I was a man descending into a place where I could taste my solitude, familiar and tannic.
Quinces are ripe, GertrudeStein, when they are the yellow of canary wings in midflight. They are ripe when their scent teases you with the snap of green apples and the perfumed embrace of coral roses. But even then quinces remain a fruit, hard and obstinateâuseless, GertrudeStein, until they are simmered, coddled for hours above a low, steady flame. Add honey and water and watch their dry, bone-colored flesh soak up the heat, coating itself in an opulent orange, not of the sunrises that you never see but of the insides of tree-ripened papayas, a color you can taste. To answer your question, GertrudeStein, love is not a bowl of quinces yellowing in a blue and white china bowl, seen but untouched.
5
THE LAST TIME I saw Anh Minh, we met at the back gate of the Governor-General's house. I remember looking inside the brightly lit kitchen and seeing the ceiling fans whirl, pushing hot currents of air out the windows. It was two o'clock in the morning, but the kitchen was all oven heat. Chef Blériot had fired up all four of the coal ovens and stuffed them with slender loaves, their smooth surfaces slashed at even intervals. The rest of the house was dark, except for a dim glow coming from the window of the chauffeur's room.
Years ago when I had just joined the Governor-General's household, Anh Minh told me that the chauffeur was the first son of a rich merchant, had studied in Paris, returned to Vietnam to see his father smoke away all of the family's fortune in puffs of opium, lost his automobile to a gambling debt, and spent hours now, when he was not driving Monsieur and Madame's Renault, writing poems about Madame's secretary, a slightly cross-eyed girl who was half-French and half-Vietnamese. All this, my brother said to me without a breath or a pause. He ran in a similar speed through the life stories of the others who made up the household staff of fifteen. He was motivated by a sense of duty and not by a love of gossip. He knew that I would need these facts in order to survive. That they would help me to avoid the pitfalls of those personalities who ranked higher up than I. I was told these stories so that I could think of them before I opened my mouth. At the Governor-General's, a servant whom Monsieur and Madame disliked would need to be careful, but one whom his fellow servants disliked would not last the night. Think of it as having thirteen enemies as opposed to two, Anh Minh told me. He had kindly excluded himself from the count of possible assassins, and that fact I also stored away. Overall, my oldest brother preferred to limit his lessons to the goings-on of the kitchen. I always knew when Minh the Sous Chef was preparing to teach. First he would wipe his fingers on the handkerchief that he always kept in his pocket, then he would throw his head back, tendering his throat to the blades of the kitchen's ceiling fans. From out of his mouth then came praise for the merits of Breton butter, heavily salted and packed in tins, which was served to Monsieur with his morning baguettes. Madame preferred preserves, in thick glass jars with hand-lettered labels, made from yellow plums that have the name of a beautiful French girl. "Mirabelle," Anh Minh repeated so that I, too, could see her. When old Chaboux passed away and young Blériot arrived to take his place, my brother told me that these French chefs were purists, classically trained, from families of chefs going back at least a century. Minh the Sous Chef agreed that it was probably better this way. After all, the
chef de cuisine
at the Continental Palace Hotel in Saigonâa man who claimed to be from Provence but who was rumored to be the illegitimate son of a high-ranking French official and his Vietnamese seamstressâhad to be
Quinces are ripe, GertrudeStein, when they are the yellow of canary wings in midflight. They are ripe when their scent teases you with the snap of green apples and the perfumed embrace of coral roses. But even then quinces remain a fruit, hard and obstinateâuseless, GertrudeStein, until they are simmered, coddled for hours above a low, steady flame. Add honey and water and watch their dry, bone-colored flesh soak up the heat, coating itself in an opulent orange, not of the sunrises that you never see but of the insides of tree-ripened papayas, a color you can taste. To answer your question, GertrudeStein, love is not a bowl of quinces yellowing in a blue and white china bowl, seen but untouched.
5
THE LAST TIME I saw Anh Minh, we met at the back gate of the Governor-General's house. I remember looking inside the brightly lit kitchen and seeing the ceiling fans whirl, pushing hot currents of air out the windows. It was two o'clock in the morning, but the kitchen was all oven heat. Chef Blériot had fired up all four of the coal ovens and stuffed them with slender loaves, their smooth surfaces slashed at even intervals. The rest of the house was dark, except for a dim glow coming from the window of the chauffeur's room.
Years ago when I had just joined the Governor-General's household, Anh Minh told me that the chauffeur was the first son of a rich merchant, had studied in Paris, returned to Vietnam to see his father smoke away all of the family's fortune in puffs of opium, lost his automobile to a gambling debt, and spent hours now, when he was not driving Monsieur and Madame's Renault, writing poems about Madame's secretary, a slightly cross-eyed girl who was half-French and half-Vietnamese. All this, my brother said to me without a breath or a pause. He ran in a similar speed through the life stories of the others who made up the household staff of fifteen. He was motivated by a sense of duty and not by a love of gossip. He knew that I would need these facts in order to survive. That they would help me to avoid the pitfalls of those personalities who ranked higher up than I. I was told these stories so that I could think of them before I opened my mouth. At the Governor-General's, a servant whom Monsieur and Madame disliked would need to be careful, but one whom his fellow servants disliked would not last the night. Think of it as having thirteen enemies as opposed to two, Anh Minh told me. He had kindly excluded himself from the count of possible assassins, and that fact I also stored away. Overall, my oldest brother preferred to limit his lessons to the goings-on of the kitchen. I always knew when Minh the Sous Chef was preparing to teach. First he would wipe his fingers on the handkerchief that he always kept in his pocket, then he would throw his head back, tendering his throat to the blades of the kitchen's ceiling fans. From out of his mouth then came praise for the merits of Breton butter, heavily salted and packed in tins, which was served to Monsieur with his morning baguettes. Madame preferred preserves, in thick glass jars with hand-lettered labels, made from yellow plums that have the name of a beautiful French girl. "Mirabelle," Anh Minh repeated so that I, too, could see her. When old Chaboux passed away and young Blériot arrived to take his place, my brother told me that these French chefs were purists, classically trained, from families of chefs going back at least a century. Minh the Sous Chef agreed that it was probably better this way. After all, the
chef de cuisine
at the Continental Palace Hotel in Saigonâa man who claimed to be from Provence but who was rumored to be the illegitimate son of a high-ranking French official and his Vietnamese seamstressâhad to be
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